AJ Logo Get ArtsJournal in your inbox
for FREE every morning!
HOME > Yesterdays


Monday, February 2




Ideas

What Really Happened... "Are we living in a golden age of conspiracy theory? And if so, what stands behind this apparent upsurge in global anxiety? Fortunately, no shortage of observers has turned their attention to such questions..." Boston Globe 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 6:49 pm

Visual Arts

Stolen Ivories Returned Five ivory sculptures stolen from the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto a few weeks ago, have been recovered. "The palm-sized sculptures - valued at $1.5 million - were dropped off at the office of Toronto lawyer Dennis Morris, who turned them over to police on the weekend." Canada.com (CP) 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:31 pm

Music

Lincoln Center's NYP Rapprochement Observers of the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center have been watching to see the repercussions of the Philharmonic's aborted move to Carnegie Hall. "Lincoln Center had been widely expected to make the orchestra pay a price for its flirtation with Carnegie Hall. Instead the center appears to be the one trying to make amends, and the Philharmonic, rather than being weakened and chastened, continues to show a strong hand." The New York Times 02/02/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:43 pm

Sydney Opera House Looking To Lower Floor The Sydney Opera House may be an architectural icon, but its acoustics have needed upgrading. How to accomplish it? One plan would be to lower the floor. "It is understood the project would cost more than $300 million but would vastly improve the theatre. A lowered floor would mean more cubic metres of volume, which in turn would make a huge difference to the acoustics of the Opera Theatre." Sydney Morning Herald 02/02/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:27 pm

Arts Issues

Denver Arts Institutions Had A Difficult 2003 Overall, Denver's arts organizations saw declines in attendance, membership and fundraising in 2003. It was the second year in a row of declines... Rocky Mountain News 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 10:04 pm

Participatory Artocracy "From musicians to Hollywood studios, and from network executives to owners of newspapers such as this one, the creators and purveyors of arts and letters are realizing that Americans increasingly are unwilling to sit down, shut up and consume their culture in the time-honored fashion of grateful passivity." Chicago Tribune 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 8:21 pm

People

Robert Harth, 47 Carnegie Hall's Robert Harth was the right director at the right time. He "fostered collegiality, demystified the director's post and continued with the Carnegie Hall mission: to present the great artists and ensembles of the world, both fledglings and masters; to devise educational offerings; to bring music students to the institution for training workshops; and especially to commission and perform new works. His attitude toward contemporary music was refreshingly free of agenda. Living composers were not some special cause or somber obligation. Rather, it was only natural for anyone interested in the great heritage of classical music to be curious about what's going on today." The New York Times 02/02/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:49 pm

Selling Out Abroad Why do big stars promote products? Because they can make big money. But "like Bill Murray's character in the film, most A-listers will do ads for these types of products only in non English-speaking countries. Why? Because they're paranoid about tarnishing their images back at home in Hollywood. In the age of staras- luxury-brand, no celebrity worth their Golden Globe nomination wants to be associated with pedestrian consumer items. Or to look like a money-grabbing sell-out." The Age (Melbourne) 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 4:44 pm

Carnegie Hall Leader Dies At 47 "Robert Harth arrived at Carnegie Hall in September 2001 with a mandate to stabilize an institution bruised by the acrimonious tenure of his predecessor, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg. He quickly projected a combination of businesslike efficiency and musical adventure, adroitly navigating a series of potentially catastrophic shoals." Newsday 01/31/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 2:24 pm

Theatre

Denver Theatre Needs Overhaul As Search Continues For New Leadership The Denver Center Theatre is looking for a new director. But the way it is going about it seems a bit narrow, writes Lisa Bornstein... Rocky Mountain News 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 10:08 pm

Florida Students Thrown Out Of Theatre Competition For Cutting Up Flag "Students performing a play about the dangers of mindless political indoctrination were disqualified from a Broward County theater competition after cutting up an American flag, as judges questioned the legality and offensiveness of that act." Miami Herald (AP) 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:39 pm

Valuing Live Theatre In A Digital World The art of theatre seems stubbornly rooted in the pre-digital age. But maybe that's not a bad thing. "Plenty of academics ... have argued that the communal experience of live performance will only get more attractive as technologized art grows in influence. Surely people will need and crave external escape from the isolating forces of a digital age that traps them for more and more hours in front of a two-dimensional screen." Chicago Tribune 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 8:47 pm

Publishing

The New Urban Lit If 80 percent of Canada can be considered "urban," is there something called "urban literature?" A new publishing imprint aims at defining it. "But urban's presence in literature is still nascent. The form's more characteristic themes -- a sense of bravado, youth, hip-hop culture, a certain hypersexuality, and often some reflection of violence -- are only just creating their own hood in the literary canon." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/31/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:09 pm

The Evolving Book Books always seemed so traditional. And then came the promise of e-books, giving readers more control of how they read. But "after an initial frenzy of attention, neither hypertext nor e-books gets much ink these days. Are readers ceding control back to writers?" Chicago Tribune 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 8:52 pm

Insta-Talk Novel A French writer has written the first novel in shorthand instant messaging language. "Phil Marso has published (on paper) an antismoking novella for teenagers called 'Pa Sage a Taba' (Not Wise to Smoke), composed in the jambalaya of abbreviations, slang, and neologisms that teens worldwide use to send each other text messages online and via cellphone." Boston Globe 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 5:44 pm

Media

Our Special Effection For The Movies "In the past decade studio budgets for special effects have exploded. Effects budgets have gone from $5 million a movie to $50 million. It's now not uncommon for movies to cost $150 million, with effects accounting for a third of that budget. There's barely any movie made today that doesn't have digital clean-up, matte painting, wire removal or fixing something out of place, like bags under the eyes on a bad day. The cost increases result largely from the growing sophistication of special effects." Orange County Register 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 9:58 pm

More Choice = Tyranny Of Minorities The proliferation of TV channels has "brought about the tyranny of the largest minority. Because reality shows are hot right now, most networks throw them up willy-nilly, holding their noses all the way. And news, which networks used to treat more like a public trust in exchange for their licenses to operate over public airwaves, has become another profit center. Viewers bring profits, and because the people want Michael Jackson 'news' more than, say, foreign trade news, they get Michael Jackson news. But now rapidly burgeoning digital technology is threatening to narrow those audiences even further." Chicago Tribune 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 8:27 pm

Dance

The Real Balanchine "Five dancers who worked with George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet gathered recently, on the occasion of his birth centennial, to discuss the choreographer. Their remarks evoked a man of demanding genius, magnetic elegance, mysterious wisdom and a fondness for joking, TV's 'Gunsmoke' and pizza." San Francisco Chronicle 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 10:19 pm

City Ballet Balanchine - In Need Of Help As New York City Ballet's Balanchine celebration wends on, Tobi Tobias laments the state of the company's custodianship of its illustrious founder's legacy. "The two-dimensional condition I find in many of the NYCB’s Balanchine productions is not simply physical. I’d dare to say—though now we’re getting into the dangerous realm of the intangible—that a spiritual dimension is lacking as well. Is the present manner in which the NYCB dances its Balanchine capable of remedy? Some of the erosion that has occurred is inevitable, given the absence of the choreographer as chief custodian of his work. But I'm convinced that..." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 02/01/04
Posted: 02/01/2004 7:15 pm


Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright ©
2002 ArtsJournal. All Rights Reserved